Boys Win KPMG Enterprise Trophy

In what is always a closely fought battle between teams of Sixth
Form boys and girls, this year's winner of the KPMG Enterprise
Trophy was UniLingo. The trophy was awarded to them by
returning Old Girl Frankie Davenport who works in the International
Corporate Tax Department at KPMG, having graduated with a degree in
Economics from St Andrews. In her closing remarks she said
"this year we have seen an unprecedentedly high standard of entry,
possibly the best ever."

The annual competition, which pits the best two girls' Sixth
Form teams against the two best teams from the boys' school, was as
close as ever, with each team presenting viable business
propositions through professional presentations to a judging panel
and an audience of students and teachers.

This year's judging panel - "the dragons" - comprised David
Bradley, Technical Services Manager at Milliken Industrials; Ian
Ashworth of Ashworth Management Services; and BT Call Centre
Manager, Phil Warriner. They had the unenviable task of
declaring a winner from the four high quality offerings.
Stephanie Foster, a Partner at Rivington Associates was also in
attendance, having run Business Enterprise and Awareness Training
(BEAT) courses for the boys at Patterdale Hall and for the Girls'
Division PSE programme. Following these programmes, the 230
students from Year 12 of both divisions, formed teams of
five to develop prospective new businesses offering a new product
or service with a view to asking a local bank for a business loan
to set up their new enterprise. The four teams that had won
through to the final had thus already overcome a lot of competition
and had chance to polish their performance along the
way. On the night, each group made a ten minute presentation,
backed up by PowerPoint slides, to a panel of judges. Teams were
put under considerable pressure in defending the virtues and merits
of their marketing strategies and cash-flow forecasts.

Smartcase opened the pitches with an excellent presentation
explaining their proposition of offering customisable cases for
smart phones; Cycene (the Old English word for "kitchen") promised
to deliver safer cooking for beginners and the elderly through
their new "Red Hot" product which warned you when your pan was
running dry; UniLingo pitched a product which would allow wireless
earpiece translation; and Earbuddies offered affordable, wireless
and blue-tooth enabled earplugs.

After grilling each team with some searching questions the
judges made their decision and the winning team was announced as
UniLingo with the runners-up being Earbuddies.